Thousands of hectares of forests and crops destroyed, hundreds of collapsed homes, dozens of victims without water or electricity… The material toll is heavy after the fires that ravaged north-eastern Algeria and left at least 34 dead.

According to Interior Minister Brahim Merad, 140 fires have been recorded in 17 prefectures. In addition to the human losses, the fires, mainly concentrated in the northeast, “ravaged large areas of forest, brush and fruit trees”, said the minister, without giving figures. “Instructions” have been given to local authorities to “launch the observation of damage and losses and identify the victims, in order to compensate them as soon as possible”, he added.

More than 1,500 people had to be evacuated from the many villages hit by the very violent fires which devastated everything in their path: maquis and cultivated fields, houses, shops, even damaging seaside resorts. Supplies and disaster relief are beginning to be organized, while water and electricity have been cut off. Psychological cells are set up. “We need help, all the help we can get, we need clothes, mattresses, things like that,” a man he met at a supply point in Bejaïa, 250 km away, told AFP. of Algiers, the area most affected by the fires that the emergency services took three days to put out.

In Aït Oussalah, near the hamlet of Toudja, sixteen people, “or 10% of the inhabitants”, according to witnesses, were burned alive as they tried to flee. Tahar Chibane, 35, lost a good part of his family: “There were sixteen deaths, including six from the Chibane family and nine from the Zenoud family. We have lost 99% of our land,” he told AFP during a funeral on Wednesday July 26 in the locality of Souk El-Dejemaa. “I can’t find the words to say the importance of a soul, the soul has no value, we are still standing but how can you stay sane when you’ve lost by one suddenly seven or eight members of his family? “, told AFP Djoudi Zenoud, who also came to bury a loved one.

Fourteen fires in Tunisia

An investigating judge ordered the provisional detention of twelve people for their involvement in the outbreak of forest fires in several wilayas, said Thursday a press release from the public prosecutor of the court of Sidi M’hamed, in Algiers.

At least three witnesses complained to AFP about the delays in the emergency response and a lack of resources. “The local population has played a crucial role in preventing the extension of certain outbreaks. We used plastic buckets filled from a volunteer’s truck and climbed into the forest to fight the flames,” said one of the volunteers, Mohammed Said Omal.

Every summer, the north and east of Algeria are hit by forest fires, a phenomenon that is accentuated from year to year under the effect of climate change, leading to droughts and heat waves. In August 2022, gigantic fires killed 37 people in the El Tarf region (northeast). The summer of 2021 had been the deadliest in decades: more than 90 people had died in the north, particularly in Kabylia.

On the other side of the border, in Tunisia, damage estimates also started after fires which mainly affected wooded areas near Tabarka (north-west), sparing most inhabited areas. “The fourteen fires in seven regions have been brought under control. Between ten and twenty houses have been damaged and there is great destruction of forests, agricultural land and olive trees,” Civil Protection spokesman Moez Triaa told AFP on Thursday, stressing that the losses will exceed the 2,000 hectares destroyed the previous year. A couple had opened an ecolodge in the forest above Tabarka in 2019, which burned down completely: “For us, it’s our life, the value is not the money but our commitment”, explained to AFP Adel Selmi.